RANKING MEMBER CAPITO QUESTIONS EDUCATION SECRETARY ON BUDGET REQUEST

Press Release

"It's not lost on me that the last three years have been exceptionally challenging for our nation's education system. Pandemic-related school closures have disrupted the lives of students and families across America, and set our country back two decades in both in reading and math achievement, according to the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress scores. Just last week, the NAEP reported that knowledge of civics, among the nation's eighth graders, fell for the first time since the federal government began testing children under the current framework in 1998, along with a five point decline in average test scores in history."

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These devastating kinds of achievement were in spite of the $190 billion in COVID relief funding provided for elementary and secondary education. We can and should do better. Unfortunately, this budget is almost a carbon-copy of the FY 2023 budget, which was recently rejected, recycling partisan proposals and unrealistic spending levels. The 2024 budget request for the Department of Education is $90 billion dollars, an increase of more than 13% over FY 2023. Expensive, new federal programs like "free community college' and "universal preschool,' both of which my home state of West Virginia are already doing without unwanted federal intervention, are ill advised and unlikely to be considered. Meanwhile, common sense bipartisan programs, like the Rural Education Program were level funded in this budget.

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Our nation is facing fiscal challenges that will not make our jobs easy this year. In order to be successful, we must work together to prioritize funding that best supports opportunity for all students.

This also means ensuring students have access to multiple pathways to a successful career. While traditional higher-ed is a goal of many students, many others are interested in alternative pathways, including careers and technical education, apprenticeships, and increasingly short term certificate and licensing programs. We will continue to invest in programs like Career and Technical State Grants, and explore how our higher-ed programs can better support students seeking meaningful work-based learning opportunities.

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Let's talk about student loan pause that we are currently under. It's been more than three years since student loan borrowers had been required to repay their loans. At the height of the pandemic, it made sense to give borrows limited relief from repaying student loans and Congress provided that relief through the CARES Act. However, eight extensions of the payment pause later, and with the official end of the public health emergency today, it is time to transition borrowers back to repayment.

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I think we've all learned that clear communication is absolutely critical, whether it's about a loan, or whether it's about to wear a mask, or if your school is going to close. So I would hope that the administration would be more specific, and you would be more specific.

I mentioned about the NAEP scores in my opening statement. It's deeply troubling to me. I mean, I'm a mother of three, I've got eight grandchildren. I know those daggone tests when they come in and the kids have to sit there and the parents get all nervous, because you got to make sure you get them up and feed them, and they're all ready for their tests. It's like it's the biggest day in their life, but it does show trends, if nothing else, and the trend is not good. So my concern here is, we don't we cannot reset the bar here. In other words, the baseline can't go down to where we are."

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